Animate who is aware of a bodily sensation, perception, emotion, or mental state.
Experiencer does not seem to have any prototypical adposition in the languages we have looked at. In English, it can be construed in several ways:
the anger of the students (Experiencer↝Gestalt) 001
the students' anger overTopic the decision (Experiencer↝Gestalt) 002
Running is enjoyable for me (Experiencer↝Beneficiary) 003
The pizza was (too) salty for me (Experiencer↝Beneficiary) 004
It feels hot to me (Experiencer↝Goal) 005
That was astounding to me (Experiencer↝Goal) 006
This is my favorite movie (Experiencer↝Gestalt) 009
The answer is known by me (Experiencer↝Agent) 010
The answer is known to me (Experiencer↝Goal) 011
That is my opinion (Experiencer↝Gestalt) 012
That was my experience (Experiencer↝Gestalt) 013
Bodily events with an Experiencer are limited to perceptions like seeing and hearing, and sensations such as pain and hunger. The undergoer of an involuntary bodily event like sneezing, bleeding, falling asleep, breaking a limb, or dying would instead be a Theme, as these events are primarily physical in nature.
One whose mental state (including events of knowledge, memory, belief, desire, intention) or emotion is described is an Experiencer. However, the individual is an Agent if exhibiting or acting on their thoughts/emotions, even internally (e.g. making a decision).
Less canonically, Experiencer applies to semi-pragmatic usages meaning ‘from the perspective of’:1
For John, the party was not fun at all. (Experiencer↝Beneficiary) 007
For John, there was no reason to attend. (Experiencer↝Beneficiary) 008
Elsewhere, the term cognizer is sometimes used for one whose mental state is described.
Counterpart: Stimulus or Topic
Interestingly, many uses of for carry an information structural association of delimiting the scope of an assertion. For John, the party was not fun at all makes no commitment regarding how fun the party was to others. This food is good forPurpose dinner/forBeneficiary folks with dietary constraints and He is short forComparisonRef a basketball player also have this property. As the present scheme targets semantic relations, it is not equipped to formalize pragmatic aspects of the meaning. ↩
| description | Animate who is aware of a bodily sensation, perception, emotion, or mental state. |
|---|---|
| animacy | animate |
| parent | Participant |
| deprecated | False |
| deprecation_message |